Now, I am a simple man, and this cultivated and handsome man of the world delighted me. To me immured in a mill town he brought the modern world's best. He was a window, for me, which let in light. "That great blonde!" said Madame, wonderingly. "He is so designedly fascinating I wonder you fail to see the wheels go 'round. However, let me admit that I thank God devoutly I am no longer young and susceptible. Consider the terrible power such a man might exert over an ardent and unsophisticated heart!" It was Hunter who had brought me a slim book, making known to me a poet I had otherwise missed. "You are sure to like Bridges," he told me, "for the sake of one verse. Have you ever thought _why_ I like you, Father De Rancé? Because you amuse me. I see in you one of life's subtlest ironies: A Greek beauty-worshiper posing as a Catholic priest--in Appleboro!" He laughed. And then, with real feeling, he read in his resonant voice: "I love all beautiful things: I seek and adore them. God has no better praise, And man in his hasty days, Is honored for them." When at times the secretary brought his guests to see what he pleasingly enough termed Appleboro's one claim to distinction, the Butterfly Man did the honors to the manner born. Drawer after drawer and box after box would he open, patiently answering and explaining. And indeed, I think the contents were worth coming far to see. Some of them had come to us from the ends of the earth; from China and Japan and India and Africa and Australia, from the Antilles and Mexico and South America and the isles of the Pacific; from many and many a lonely missionary station had they been sent us. Even as our collection grew, the library covering it grew with it. But this was merely the most showy and pleasing part of the work. That which had the greatest scientific worth and interest, that upon which John Flint's value and reputation were steadily mounting, was in less lovely and more destructive forms of insect life. Beside this last, a labor calling for the most unremitting, painstaking, persevering research, observation, and intelligence, the painted beauties of his butterflies were but as precious play. For in this last he was wringing from Nature's reluctant fingers some of her dearest and most deeply hidden secrets. He was like Jacob, wrestling all night long with an unknown angel, saying sturdily: "I will not let thee go except thou tell me thy name!" Like Jacob, he paid the price of going halt for his knowledge. I like to think that Hunter understood the enormous value of the naturalist's work. But I fancy the silent and absorbed student himself was to his mind the most interesting specimen, the most valuable study. It amused him to try to draw his reticent host into familiar and intimate conversation. Flint was even as his name.